Transfer of Training Part 4 - Putting It All Together

Here's what we've covered so far:

Part 1 covered the 3 basic muscle contraction types being eccentric, isometric and concentric as well as touching on the force-velocity spectrum.

Part 2 looked at how each of these 3 muscle contractions look like in action and how they can displayed in different ways.

Part 3 gave you some insight on how to organise all the different contraction types in categories to make it easier to program.

Today we're putting it all together in conjunction with the force-velocity spectrum from earlier starting from the left side and high force/low velocity side.
 
                                    

Max Strength is a high force/low velocity action using loads of 90 - 100%. We've all done 1rm's before and this is exactly that. A slow, grinding rep that is completed irrespective of time. In this case traditional reps with no specific tempo is best used here but it should not be the only way you lift, which is kinda the point of this series!

Strength Speed is moderate to high force with low to moderate velocity using loads of 70 - 90%. Slow eccentric reps x 3 - 5secs and isometric reps x 2 - 3secs will mostly fall into this category.

Power is moderate force and moderate velocity and can be anything from 30 - 80% depending on your muscle fibre make up and training base. Again slow eccentric and isometric reps will be used at the high force end of this with some drop and catch and dynamic effort variations being used at the lower end. You could also use drop catch + isometric options in the same rep for these.

Speed strength is moderate to low force with moderate to high velocity using loads of 10 - 30%. Here we're talking dynamic effort lifting, drop catch lifts, and also weighted throwing variations with barbells and medicine balls. Specific reps in a specific time frame is also a goody here (5 reps in 5 secs etc).

Speed is low force and high velocity and is where the more sport specific stuff comes in like top end sprinting.

Looking at our categories from last week here's they look:

Stiffness - Speed
Relax/Contraction Speed - Speed Strength + Speed
Force Absorption - Max Strength + Strength Speed + Power + Strength Speed + Speed
Overspeed - Speed Strength + Speed
Force Output - Max Strength + Strength Speed + Power + Strength Speed + Speed

You'll see that all of those 5 categories all entail training in the speed spectrum where no-one really trains at all!

If we simply break it down to sprinting speed, the holy grail of sports performance, then it looks like something like this:

1st Step - Max Strength
From Step 1 to 5m - Strength Speed
5m to 15m - Power
15m to 25m - Speed Strength
25m Onwards - High Velocity

As you can see you do still need to train all aspects of the force-velocity spectrum for optimal speed development. Throughout the year you need to gradually ramp up from high force to low force and then obviously low velocity to high velocity.

Just bare in mind that each portion of the spectrum will stress the nervous system quite a bit, especially if you're keeping back of bar velocity so you can't go gung-ho and try to train them all at the same time.

In the Aussie Rules Ultimate Training manual, the yearly program is set up exactly how I have suggested things be planned in this post which can be purchased from the Paypal link at the top of the page so grab your copy today